© David Burton 2020

     It is now more than 70 years since the State of Israel came into modern existence. For these past 7+ decades, the fair-minded in the world have been urging and hoping for Israel, along with its Middle East neighbors and those Arabs living in the land formerly known as Palestine to come an equitable accommodation and peace. Israel has done its part. It has bent over backwards in a futile and costly attempt to peacefully settle the issue. Israel has twice withdrawn from Lebanon after fighting back Arafat’s terrorist PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) and the Hezbollah terrorist who launched rockets and mortars into the civilian areas of northern Israel. Israel totally withdrew from the Gaza Strip and handed total control of the region to the Arabs living there. In return, another terrorist organization, Hamas, took control of Gaza and, ever since, has fired rockets and mortar shells into southwestern Israel, built terror tunnels and flown incendiary kites and drones over Israel’s farmland and fruit groves. Israel agreed to turn control over to the PA (Palestinian Authority) of some 90% of Samaria and Judea as the first step toward the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state to co-exist with Israel – the two-state solution. In return, the terrorist leader in Samaria and Judea, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), has turned the region into a training ground for terrorists who are urged to murder Israeli civilians. Twice, Israel was attacked by its Egyptian and Jordanian neighbors, and twice, Israel has withdrawn from the territories it captured in those two wars. Two times, Israel was attacked by another of its Arab neighbors, Syria, and, with the exception of the Golan Heights, has withdrawn to its own borders both times. Israel has repeatedly proven itself to not be an aggressor and to not have expansionist aspirations.

     For over 70 years, Israel has conceded, accommodated and given into the world’s demands to try and make peace with its Middle East neighbors and those Arabs living in the land formerly known as Palestine. For over 70 years, the Middle East Terrorists have laughed in the world’s face and they continue to attempt to destroy the State of Israel. All this time, the useful idiots of the world have continued to support these Terrorists. These stupid idiots continue to demand equal treatment of these murdering terrorists instead of supporting the one country that has steadfastly continued to work toward peace. These stupid idiots refuse to see what’s in front of their eyes and to realize that even-handed treatment hasn’t and won’t work. These blind idiots need to come to their senses and face reality. The Middle East Terrorists must not be given fair and equal treatment. They must be defeated. Would anyone in their right mind have ever demanded fair and equal treatment of the Nazis in the 20th century? Why should similar enemies of humanity be given equal treatment here in the 21st century? Are the 21st century Middle East Terrorists any different than the Nazis of the 20th century?

NOTE: Throughout this article, I use the term “Palestinian Arabs” to refer to those Arabs living in the Gaza Strip, Samaria and Judea regions of the area formerly known as “Palestine”. Those Arabs living in the State of Israel would be referred to as Israeli Arabs. All residents of the area formerly known as “Palestine” would be referred to as “Palestinians”, whether Jew, Arab, Christian, Muslim, Druze, Circassian, atheist, etc. There never has been a “Palestinian State”. There has only been the region named “Palestina” by the Romans and subsequently called “Palestine”. This region was designated the “Palestine Mandate” by the League of Nations.

     It’s fine to be fair and even-handed when the two parties to a conflict are both reasonable and both honestly want to resolve the conflict in a fair and just manner. Can any reasonable and open-minded person say this about those Palestinian Arabs who have openly declared their desire to destroy the State of Israel, rid the region of all Jews and establish a terrorist Islamic State in the land formerly known as Palestine?

     Throughout the past seven-plus decades, we have had to put up with the closet anti-Semites, the closet Israel haters and the obedient idiots of the world who can’t recognize simple facts, no matter how often these obvious facts are presented to them. Take for instance, that closet anti-Semite and Israel basher, Democratic Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. During a Democratic presidential primary debate in late December, 2019, “Sen. Bernie Sanders continued his ongoing criticism of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians.
     “ ‘Israel has — and I say this as somebody who lived in Israel as a kid, [I’m] proudly Jewish {a disingenuous statement, if not an outright lie} – Israel has the right to exist, not only to exist, but to exist in peace and security. But what U.S. foreign policy must be about is not just being pro-Israel. We must be pro-Palestinian as well,’ [Emphasis mine] Sanders said.” (Ref. 1) According to Bernie’s thinking, the free world should have been pro-Nazi back in the 1930’s while Hitler and his henchmen were plotting the murder of 6 million Jews and a war that would result in 20 million deaths and the destruction of much of Europe!

     Middle East terrorists understand only one thing in their dealings with the infidels of the world – strength and power. These terrorists do not adhere to the norms and the rules of the western world. For them, there is no such thing as fair, just and equal accommodations. They only have one objective - elimination of any and all opposition and total domination and subjugation of everyone else. They view calls for even-handed treatment of their demands as signs of weakness on the part of those proposing such an arrangement. They view calls for even-handed treatment of their demands as evidence that those taking this position will give them more and more. So, they stall, lie and keep demanding more and more while the useful idiots of the world keep offering them more and more in the foolish belief that more and more concessions, along with “fair and even-handed” treatment will appease them. The only thing that will appease animals such as these is the eventual devouring of their prey.

     It’s unfortunate but the useful idiots of the world never learn. The fantasy that the Middle East terrorists are reasonable and can be depended upon to negotiate as any reasonable and fair-minded person would is persistent and is in complete disregard of more than 70 years of Middle East experience. Even presidents of the United States persist in believing in fairy tales. Back in 2011, it was reported that “The Mother of all useful idiots, Jimmy Carter, has appealed to President Obama to fulfill his Nobel Prize mandate by working harder on the Palestinian state issue. It is one thing to be a useful idiot but it is another thing to be a useful idiot who never learns from his mistakes. Mr. Carter is a rare jewel in our Collectivist Crown. His statement was made at a news conference in glorious Havana, how appropriate.” (Ref. 2)

     There are many in the world, including some Muslim Arabs, who see through the duplicitous dealings of the Palestinian Arab terrorist leaders who control the Palestinian Arab areas of Samaria, Judea and the Gaza Strip. One such Muslim Arab, who is based in the Middle East, has written his assessment of these terrorists’ abhorrence to a potential peace plan that was {and still is} under consideration by the Trump administration in 2018. This Arab Muslim writer clearly says what should be obvious to any reasonable person. But closet Jew-haters, anti-Zionists and Israel-bashers have never been known for their reasonableness. In what follows, I present my edited version of what this Arab Muslin writer has written. For the unedited version, see Ref. 3

     The Palestinian Arabs wanted nothing to do with President Trump's plan: they knew it would never satisfy their demands. The Palestinian Arabs were not opposed to the peace plan because of a dispute over a border or a settlement or a checkpoint or the status of Jerusalem. They were against Trump's plan -- and any other peace initiative -- because the Palestinian Arabs had something else in mind.
     The two Palestinian parties, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, may disagree on almost everything. But, the one thing on which they do agree is the elimination of Israel. The only peace plan acceptable to the current Palestinian leaders would be one that facilitated their mission of pursuing jihad against Israel to obliterate it.
     If any of the useful idiots of the world wish to learn more about the true ambitions of the Palestinian Arabs, they would do well to take in a sermon at a mosque on some Friday or stop into a school in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Perhaps then they would see for themselves that no peace plan in the world could counter the poison that was and is injected daily into the hearts and minds of the Palestinian Arabs and their children.
     The Palestinian Arabs had never laid eyes on US President Donald Trump's plan for peace in the Middle East. The Palestinian Aabs knew nothing about the plan. But that didn’t stop them from categorically rejecting the plan just as they have rejected every peace plan since 1948 and which they will continue to do until they are replaced by a new and moderate leadership – extremely unlikely – or until Israel unilaterally takes control of the areas it wants to integrate into the State of Israel and leaves the rest of the Palestinian Arab terrorists to rot in their self-made misery.
     In the first half of 2018, the PA leadership refused to have any dealings with the US administration - except, of course, when it came to receiving financial aid from the US. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his senior associates in Ramallah not only refused to meet with any official from the US administration, but – as is their style - they waged a smear campaign of hate and incitement against President Trump and top US administration representatives and officials.
     The vicious attacks on Trump and the senior US administration officials were also accompanied by statements from Abbas and other Palestinian officials concerning the US president's Middle East peace plan. In these statements, the Palestinian Arabs not only rejected the plan that didn’t yet exist, but also repeatedly condemned it, dubbing it a "conspiracy" designed to eliminate Palestinian Arab rights.
     As has always been the case, the kind of "peace" that the Palestinian Arabs are seeking is one that no peace initiative would ever provide. The obvious fact is: The Palestinian Arabs want a peace without, not with, Israel. The reason the Palestinian Arabs had a problem with the Trump plan was that they saw it as an obstacle to their plan to eliminate Israel. The Palestinian Arabs knew that the Trump plan - regardless of its details - would not facilitate their mission to destroy Israel. The Palestinian Arabs, in fact, see any peace plan presented to them - whether by Trump or anyone else - as an obstacle hindering their effort and dream to continue the jihad (holy war) against Israel and Jews. They did not want to have to say "No" to the Trump Administration; it was safer just to duck the issue, stall and buy time until a friendlier US administration would come along. They were and are confident that the useful idiots of the world will continue to support them. If anything, these Palestinian Arab terrorists are patient!
     When the Palestinian Arabs denounced the Trump plan as a "conspiracy," they meant that this was a US conspiracy to thwart their efforts to annihilate Israel. What the Palestinian Arabss were saying was: "Who are these Americans to come and preach to us about peace with the Jews living here when our real goal is to drive the Jews out of this land?"
     In the summer of 2000, Yasser Arafat walked out of the Camp David summit (with President Bill Clinton and then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak) after realizing that the proposals on the table did not satisfy the Palestinian Arab aspirations and dreams – of destroying Israel. What Arafat wanted was Israel to give him control over the entire West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. What he wanted was to establish a Palestinian Arab state on these territories so that the Palestinian Arabs could use it as a launching pad to "liberate the rest of Palestine" – that is, to destroy Israel. When a furious Arafat realized that he would not get what he wanted, he returned to Ramallah and incited Palestinian Arabs to wage against Israel another wave of terrorism, called the Second Intifada.
     Now Mahmoud Abbas is sitting in Arafat's seat. Abbas did not like the Trump peace plan, sight unseen: he knew that it would not advance his goal of fulfilling the "phased solution," in which Palestinian Arabs would take land bit by bit and use it as launching pads to pursue the jihad against Israel.
     “The Palestinian Arab position is and has been very clear: Israel must give us as much land as possible so that we can continue to build our power, force and energies to continue the struggle to achieve our ultimate goal – eliminating Israel. The Trump plan, as far as Abbas and his associates were concerned, was a bad deal because it did not require Israel to surrender completely and abandon territories that would be later occupied by Hamas, the Islamic State, Iran and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
     There is only one peace plan that the Palestinian Arabs will accept; it is the plan that enables them to achieve the "phased solution" of wiping Israel off the face of the earth.
     The world saw what happened the last time Israel gave Abbas land. That was in 2005, when Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip and handed it over to Abbas and his security forces.
     Within a few months, Abbas and his cronies fled the Gaza Strip after Hamas and had thrown Palestinian Authority members to their deaths from the top floors of tall buildings, and handed the entire area over to Hamas. The rest, as they say, is history. If Israel withdraws from the West Bank, the same scenario would likely repeat itself there. This time, however, Hamas would take over the West Bank not within months, but in days or weeks.
     In addition, no Palestinian Arab leader is in a position to accept any peace agreement with Israel -- especially not after both Abbas in the West bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip have spent an entire lifetime radicalizing their people against Israel through incitement and indoctrination.
     Decades of incitement in mosques and in the media have turned Israel, in the eyes of most Palestinian Arabs, into one large settlement that needs to be uprooted. Consequently, the Palestinian Arab public is not prepared to hear about any peace plan, not from Trump and not even from Prophet Mohammed.
     The Palestinian Arabs have a problem with Israel's presence in the Middle East: most of them have still not come to terms with the Jews' right to live in a secure and sovereign state of their own anywhere in the Middle East.
     The Palestinian Arabs are divided into two camps -- one that openly states that it does not want to make peace with Israel because its goal is to destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamic state, and a second camp that, even if it wanted to make peace with Israel – and it does not – could never do it because it has trained its own people to accept only a mandate for murder.
     Undoubtedly, Trump and his envoys came with the best intentions about making peace between Arabs and Jews. However, what they did not understand was [and still is] that there is no partner on the Palestinian Arab side for any deal with Israel. Our useful idiots of the world don’t seem to understand this fundamental truth either. Unfortunately, all too many of these idiots don’t want to understand this incontrovertible fact. These useful idiots would rather continue to support Abbas and the other Middle East terrorists, while continuing to blame Israel for not reaching an agreement with those fanatics who want nothing more than to eliminate Israel and its Jews from the face of the earth.

     It is not only non-Jews who support those Palestinian Arab terrorists whose true objective has been, is, and always will be the destruction of the State of Israel and the elimination of all Jews in the Middle East. Amazingly, there are also Jews who have bought into the bull spouted by the terrorist leaders of the PA and Hamas.

     There is little doubt the Palestinian Arab people in Gaza suffer but it isn’t because of the Israelis who also suffer from the constant attacks by their rulers – Hamas. Hamas is causing the suffering of the Palestinian Arab people in Gaza. Tell that to the useful idiot Jews Geraldo and Bernie who side with Hamas.
     Geraldo Rivera, born Gerry Rivers, was raised Jewish by his Jewish mother but he took on his father’s Hispanic culture since it was his ticket to fame. He does become Jewish, however, when he is supporting the terrorist group Hamas.
     During an interview promoting his then-new memoir, he said he regretted not backing the Palestinian Arabs, i.e., the Hamas terrorists, in 2002 during the Second Intifada.
     Geraldo blithely ignored that fact that the occupation was more the result of the Hamas terrorist leaders promoting hate and violence.
     He also ignored that fact that the Palestinian Arabs had actually got their independent state – Gaza – and that they had then elected a terror organization, Hamas, to rule over them.
     The Second Intifada was a terror campaign launched by Yasser Arafat after he rejected Clinton’s offer — a state in the West Bank and Gaza, a capital in East Jerusalem, and control of the mosques on the Temple Mount – basically 99% of what Palestinian Arabs wanted. More than a thousand Israelis were murdered, often brutally, in the Second Intifada.
     The goal of Hamas unquestionably was and is the elimination of the state of Israel. It’s in their charter and it’s never been changed. They still swear to it.
     There is rarely a day the terrorists don’t lob bombs into Israel.
     In April 2018, the Gaza terrorists planned violent “demonstrations” on the border with Israel. The goal was to get Palestinian Arabs killed – they’re something like suicide bombers – to win the condemnation of Israel by the international community. It worked and you can blame much of the bad press in the U.S. on none other than another Jewish idiot, Bernie Sanders. Bernie jumped right in to condemn Israel.
     What happened during these demonstrations was that Hamas sent 20,000 civilians to the border mixed with terrorists with the sole purpose of attacking Israeli soldiers and placing explosives on the border.
     Eighteen of these people died, most being Hamas and Islamic Jihadists. That made Bernie sad.
     Sanders went on Twitter and TV to support Hamas’s ruse.
     Bernie, ever the fool, didn’t believe Israel, he believed the terrorists. The terrorists said it was a demonstration so he took their word for it.
     “His stupidity knows no bounds. He has no understanding and certainly no knowledge of what went on. He loathes Israel. Hamas and Abbas have made it clear there is no peace agreement they will accept.” [4]

     Many on the left throughout Europe and elsewhere, along with many so-called liberals and progressives here in the U.S. belong to the useful idiots of the world club that dutifully supports the Palestinian Arab terrorists, while universally condemning Israel for defending itself and its citizens. In Great Britain, leftist constitute a major element of the useful idiots who have swallowed the lies of the Palestinian Arab terrorists, hook, line and sinker. These “left-wingers” are unsettlingly reminiscent of the naïve Socialist and Communist sympathizers who believed and blindly following the dictates of Joseph Stalin’s Communist propaganda machine as he murdered and starved millions of his opposition before World War II and then subjugated the peoples of Eastern Europe following the Second World War II. It is also similar to the anti-Semitism and naivete of those other useful idiots who support the Palestinian Arab terrorists and consistently excoriate Israel.

     At England’s King’s College in 2019, leftist students chanted ”from the river to the sea”, a slogan adopted by Hamas and heard on Al Quds protests around the world. Wittingly or unwittingly, these students were perpetuating the slogans and narratives of a vile group - Hamas.
     For many left-wingers, however, trifling details such as these are less important than signaling solidarity with the oppressed. This is because the conflict in the former Palestinian Mandate has become a proxy for the culture wars, a screen on to which leftists project intersectional fantasies about oppressed and oppressor. That their imagined version of the conflict bears little resemblance to the complex reality is irrelevant to the quinoa-eating revolutionaries of Britain’s universities.
     Israel, in this fantasy, is associated with all their favorite bogeymen. Israel is the privileged white man, the empire, the fascist state. The Palestinian Arabs, on the other hand, are the victims. They occupy the same space as people of color, homosexuals, disabled people and other perceived victims.
     The problem for these eager Western activists is that they have become the useful idiots for terrorists – for that is what groups like Hamas are. Hamas has achieved the rather impressive feat of convincing many people that they’re the good guys by means of a sophisticated propaganda operation.
     Take the tragic story of Laila al-Ghandour, a baby in Gaza who died of blood disease. A Hamas official saw an opportunity in this tragedy and paid Laila’s family to claim she had been killed by tear gas at a border protest. Al Jazeera reported Laila’s death under the headline “Laila Anwar al-Ghandour becomes the face of Gaza carnage”.
     Many in the West fall for such disinformation because of the preloaded version of the conflict they have internalized. This confirmation bias ensures that the Hamas version of events is all too often bought into, no questions asked. The projection of the culture war on to the conflict in Israel is leading to the Hamasification of the left, fueling a resurgent anti-Semitism.
     One of the principal effects of this has been to associate – in the minds of the left – the concept of Zionism with the evils of massacre, empire and occupation. That Zionism is merely the desire for a Jewish homeland is irrelevant. So too is the question of where Jewish people who have been hounded out of every other country in the Middle East should go. Instead, the left chants “from the river to the sea”, amplifying groups like Hamas’s desire to rid Jerusalem, the Middle East, and preferably the world, of Jewish people.
     This Hamasification also perpetuates the misery of the Palestinian Arab people. Hamas and their ilk have no interest in ending the conflict and have rejected all attempts to find a two-state solution. This is because they don’t recognize the right of Israel to exist, so a two-state solution simply isn’t an option.
     There are moderate Palestinian Arabs who would seek compromise and who protest the brutal regime of Hamas. In return, Hamas leaders label such people collaborators and dole out medieval punishments. By legitimizing Hamas, over-indulged Western leftists are aiding Hamas in this dirty work. By chanting Hamas slogans, they are actively sustaining the conflict and the misery of the Palestinian Arabs for whom they claim to speak.
     But why let these inconveniences get in the way of wearing a cool Palestinian scarf and signaling how liberal you are?[5]

     The useful idiots of the world continue to support the Palestinian Arab Terrorists that rule over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. They continue doing so in the light of 70+ years of experience that proves these despotic rulers are nothing but terrorists who are responsible for the murder of innocent civilians in Israel and even the deaths of their own people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The leaders of Hamas and the PA have clearly stated that they want no peace with Israel – they want its elimination. In the areas they control, Jews are not allowed. In the “Palestinian State” they want, they clearly state that there will be no Jews. The Jews already living in Israel will either be killed or driven out. These terrorists are waging a war of extermination – a war of genocide. Still, the useful idiots of the world continue to support these Palestinian Arab terrorists! Why?

     There are at least two answers to this question:

1. These useful idiots of the world are actually stupid and don’t believe the obvious facts that stare them in the face. They don’t believe the undeniable reports of what has actually transpired over the last 70+ years.
2. These useful idiots of the world are actually anti-Semites, Jew-haters, anti-Zionists, and haters of Israel. For whatever reasons, they have acquired these forms of intolerance and blind hatred. Most who fall into this second category will deny any such bigotry, but the facts belie their disingenuous denials.